To understand this phenomenon better, researchers place mice in a maze that had both narrow crossing and open spaces and monitored the cell activity in the hippocampus.

The hippocampus is the part of the brain which regulates emotions.

Astonished, the scientists found that the cells at the bottom of the hippocampus lit up when the mice entered the open areas of the maze.

When the team tried to alter the activity of the anxiety cells, they found that the mice felt less anxious.

With the help of optogenetics, a technique that allows you to control cells in living tissue using light, they were able to reduce the level of activity in the cells.

It helped the mice relax and wonder around the open areas of the maze without being stressed.
When they reduced the level of activity in the cells, the mice became less anxious and more willing to wander the open spaces of the maze.

When the level of the activity was increased, the mice became visibly more anxious.

“If we can learn enough, we can develop the tools to turn on and off the key players that regulate anxiety in people,” Joshua Gordon, director of the National Institute of Mental Health, which helped fund the research, told NPR.

Hundreds of millions of people around the world suffer from some kind of anxiety related mental illnesses, which reflects negatively in them from day to day.